The Effect of Fluid Flow on Heat Transfer and Shell Growth in Continuous Casting of Copper

Abstract

Molten metal is cooled in a continuous casting mould forming initially a thin shell that
grows thicker. The main phenomena in the mould are: fluid flow, heat transfer and solidification. A lot of mathematical models have been developed to simulate these phenomenons in continuous casting machines but most of the models developed are not calculating the fluid flow at all. In these models, it is assumed that the strand (solid and liquid) is withdrawn through the machine with a constant velocity field (= casting speed) and the convective heat transfer generated by the fluid flow is taken into account by using an effective thermal conductivity method. Also at the Helsinki University of Technology, these kinds of heat transfer models have been developed (TEMPSIMU for steels and CTEMP3D for coppers). The flow in the mould is three-dimensional and turbulent. Coupled models calculate the fluid flow, heat transfer and solidification simultaneously. The fluid flow is affected by many things: inlet flow rate, design of the inlet nozzle (SEN), immersion depth of the SEN, movement of the solid shell, natural convection, solidification shrinkage, etc. and the fully coupled, turbulent fluid flow and heat transfer models are generally subjected to convergence difficulties and they need a lot of computing time. Due to these reasons, these kinds of models are not so much used in industry so far. In the present study, a commercial FLOW-3D package is used to make coupled simulations of heat transfer, turbulent fluid flow and solidification in a copper continuous casting machine. The effect of thermophysical material data are also studied and presented. The material data are calculated by a model developed at the Helsinki University of Technology, called CASBOA.